Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Man Who Pulled Down the Sky | 1986 | John Barnes | Buy |
| 2 | Sin of Origin | 1988 | John Barnes | Buy |
| 3 | Mother of Storms | 1994 | John Barnes | Buy |
| 4 | One for the Morning Glory | 1996 | John Barnes | Buy |
| 5 | Encounter with Tiber | 1996 | John Barnes | Buy |
| 6 | Payback City | 1998 | John Barnes | Buy |
| 7 | Finity | 1999 | John Barnes | Buy |
| 8 | The Return | 2000 | John Barnes | Buy |
| 9 | Gaudeamus | 2004 | John Barnes | Buy |
| 10 | Raise the Gipper! | 2012 | John Barnes | Buy |
Barnes’s standalone novels cover considerable ground. The Man Who Pulled Down the Sky and Sin of Origin are early works from the late 1980s, establishing his interest in space politics and the sociology of future societies. Mother of Storms arrived in 1994 and attracted wide attention for its rigorous treatment of climate change before the subject had become a mainstream concern in fiction. The novel follows multiple characters across the globe as a permanent hurricane season reshapes civilization, and it holds up as one of the better hard SF climate novels of its era.
One for the Morning Glory from 1996 is a deliberate departure – a secondary-world fantasy written in the style of old fairy tales, with a dry, witty narrative voice. It shows a different side of Barnes’s range. Encounter with Tiber, co-written with Buzz Aldrin and published the same year, is a near-future novel about humanity’s first contact with evidence of alien civilization, grounded in realistic spaceflight.
Later standalones include Finity, a metaphysical thriller about a man discovering that the universe is being edited, and Gaudeamus, a satirical novel involving alien intervention and academic politics. Raise the Gipper!, published in 2012, is a short political satire. The standalones as a group show Barnes ranging widely across science fiction subgenres while consistently returning to his interest in political and social systems under stress.